


Unless They Let It Go

by verushka70



Category: due South
Genre: Community: ds_snippets | dsc6dsnippets, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-18
Updated: 2008-03-18
Packaged: 2019-07-20 07:49:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16132862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verushka70/pseuds/verushka70
Summary: Ray thinks about lying. Successfully to people he doesn’t care about. Unsuccessfully to those he loves--unless they let it go, don‘t fight about it.





	Unless They Let It Go

**Author's Note:**

> Written for community: ds-snippets/dsc6d snippets (March, 2008).  
> Prompt: wrestling, sunrise, charity, 59th challenge song lyrics

  
  
  
  
  
  


Ray thinks about lying. Successfully to people he doesn’t care about. Unsuccessfully to those he loves--unless they let it go, don‘t fight about it.  
  
His death benefit statement came. Stella is still beneficiary.  
  
Ray remembers his session with the Benefits Counselor when he was hired. He named Stella beneficiary for everything. For love. Deep, aching, helpless love.  
  
The counselor told him: a fireman named his wife and widowed mother beneficiaries. Injured severely in a fire, he later died. His wife and mother, driving together to the hospital, were killed in an accident on the way. With no kids, his death benefits went to no one.  
  
She spoke of two childless and divorced cops, partners, named each other’s beneficiaries. Killed simultaneously in the line of duty. No death benefits.  
  
_Name someone you don’t live with, younger than you, who isn’t a spouse or partner, who can arrange your funeral,_ she told Ray. _Funerals are expensive._  
  
He chose Stella anyway.  
  
Ray thinks about Fraser as beneficiary.  
  
The Counselor would not approve.  
  
* * *  
  
At sunrise on a fruitless stakeout, wrestling with the lie, Ray asks Fraser.  
  
“Got a social security number, or something Canadian like it?”  
  
“Why, yes, Ray,” Fraser answers and recites it.  
  
“Not now.” He waves Fraser silent. “Later.”  
  
Ray’s face heats with Fraser’s trust in him--saying the number, no questions asked.  
  
Fraser sees something in him. Ray wonders what. He thinks about his stark, empty, post-divorce life. Needle on his personal compass spinning wildly, never pointing at anything for long. Despondency. Directionless-ness. The undercover offer.  
  
Then Fraser. Fraser’s _partnership_. Fraser’s _friendship_.  
  
Fraser’s _wildly bizarre life-endangerment_.  
  
“I donated to this charity. In your name. I need it so you get a tax deduction,” Ray lies.  
  
Weak, he thinks.  
  
“Ah,” Fraser says, in his I’m-humoring-you voice.  
  
_Fraser’s love_.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I thought I had imported all my finished fic to AO3. But I missed this one because I failed to tag it properly and it didn't come up in a search... well, it's here now, only 10 and 1/2 years after it was written.  
>   
> Finally, this fic is based on a real conversation I had with a benefits counselor when I was first hired to a job many, many years ago.


End file.
